Re: Does MSIL Qualify?


Randall Hyde wrote:
>
> At one time there was an assembler for the UCSD P-System (a virtual
> machine, not unlike the Java VM). There were some people arguing
> about whether this was a "real" assembler because it assembled code
> for an interpreter rather than a "real" machine. Then Western Digital
> actually *built* a hardware implementation of the p-machine in
> hardware. All of a sudden, that "not an assembler" became an
> "assembler". Without changing one byte of code.

That's exactly along the line I've been thinking about. Another
example is RedCode for playing CoreWar. I don't recall ever reading
any complaints about it not being assembly language -- even though not
even a mad scientist would bother to build a physical CoreWar machine.

>
> No one questioned the early 86-64 "text to object code translators"
> being an "assembler" prior to the arrival of real hardware on which
> it ran. So there is an example of an "assembler" that produced code
> that didn't run on any machine (at the time).
>
> The bottom line is that people (especially in this newsgroup) use
> the term "assembler" to further political agendas, not to describe

One of my reasons for starting this thread...

> a type of software product. The plain and simple definition of
> an assembler is just this:
>
> "An assembler is a compiler for an assembly language."
>

Which certainly puts the definition responsibility where it should be
-- on the language -- and not on the tools used to create the binary.

> So the real trick is defining what an "assembly language" is.
> No one around here has come up with a satisfactory explanation.
> So don't expect any clear cut answers to your question.

I bet most of us can agree that it involves explicite referrences to
"machine" internals. In C, you don't normally make concrete mention of
stacks, registers, and flags -- in assembly you do.

>
> Personally, if the code is executable, either directly on hardware
> or by some simulation of the hardware, then I'd call it an assembler.
> Now whether or not IL could be considered an executable format
> is another question altogether.

This is true.

Nathan.

.

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